Hackers briefly put the world on the brink of disaster last night, as the Twitter account of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was hacked to send a rogue tweet.
With responsibility claimed by the Syrian Electronic Army, they posted a fake warning of a possible nuclear leak due to rocket strikes, which triggered a brief panic among some of the account’s 215,000 followers, according to the Register. The Syrian Electronic Army published a screenshot showing it gained access to the IDF’s Hootsuite dashboard, a Twitter client that manages public tweets and private direct messages.
The IDF later apologised for the tweet, advising users it was compromised and would “combat terror on all fronts including the cyber dimension”. This could have had some major reprocussions for the world had it not been spotted and deleted earlier, proof that password management can have very serious consequences.
